[LINK] OT: Lazy Journalists (was a subject line too long to reuse)

[Chirgwin, Richard]

Ralph wrote:
>One reason mentioned is that the pentagon publishes
>press releases ready for publication. Lazy journalists
>reprint what they're handed. We see the same thing in
>IT when Microsoft and various consulting groups release
>to the press material easily reworked into an article.

It's a funny thing, Ralph, that the use of press releases creates a feedback
loop not just in the journalists themselves, but also among the readers.

Publications live in a trust relationship with their readers - which means a
reader tends to treat published material as true until proven otherwise.
When a lot of people run the same press release, it gets an AWFUL lot of
traction - and it's really painful swimming against that tide. C.f. my
earlier attempts to debunk the "microwave pulse ray-gun" B.S. that was put
about just before the battle.

Once the stuff in a press release has hit print, it gathers its own
momentum, rather like an urban myth.

There's another component to that feedback. Once an individual has read and
assimillated a piece of information, they tend to resent - sometimes quite
bitterly - contradictory information. I guess the psychology is that it's
offensive to be told you're wrong, even if the mistake was someone else's.

So if someone tries to debunk information that's already been accepted into
the public mind, not only are they working against the "but look at the
newspaper" syndrome, they're also working against resentment from the
readers.

Funnily enough, though, I'd skip over the "press release" problem and
highlight a problem with wire services which I think is more insidious:

a) Wires
The errors (often outrageous and hilarious) of wire services aren't the
fault of, say, the SMH journos - they have nothing to do with AFP, AP,
Bloomberg, Reuters or whatever.

The wires are used not by lazy journalists, but by tightwad businessmen in
the newspapers. And lazy editors in ditto.

In the Internet age, a bad wire story spreads in about an hour (I've watched
the process on Google News, it's fascinating). The publishers lend their own
masthead to the wires, lending credibility to the story. 

And very quickly, a story becomes an ineradicable blot, regardless of its
factual content.

I know, from having worked in publishers with wire subscriptions, that a
great many stories will be followed by "Retraction: (STORY)". But once the
story is in the wild, the damage is done.


b) Internet redistribution

I always thought the theory of the Internet was that people would go
directly to the source of data - that it would disintermediate publishers
unless those publishers genuinely added something worthwhile.

Wrong.

Watch the story spread on Google News sometime. An identical wire piece
would not get republished, with only fractional change, in 1600 places in
the first hour unless readers were accepting it and still visiting the
sites.

So paradoxically, the Internet has provided the sense, but not the reality,
of disintermediation.

And I guess that feeds back into reader psychology. Correct something
someone read on Page 7 of the Telegraph, they may or may not resent it.
Correct something that "I found myself" on the Internet, and you work
against both embedded knowledge, reinforced by a feeling of accomplishment.

Yes, journalists who live their lives on press releases are lazy. I only get
offended when my colleagues append their names to the press release. But at
least press release recycling is easily discovered...

Richard Chirgwin